Balzan Prize for Michael N. Hall from the University of Basel

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09.09.2024 18:08

Balzan Prize for Michael N. Hall from the University of Basel

Prof. Dr. Michael N. Hall from the Biozentrum of the University of Basel will receive the 2024 Balzan Prize for his research into the biological mechanisms of aging. With his research into the protein TOR (Target of Rapamycin), the cell biologist has discovered a key element for controlling cell growth, which also plays a role in development, aging and a variety of diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

Michael N. Hall receives the Balzan Prize for his groundbreaking contributions to our understanding of the molecular mechanisms that regulate cell growth and aging. Michael Hall discovered two proteins, TOR1 and TOR2, that regulate cell growth and metabolism in response to nutrients. These play a central role in the aging process and in the development of age-related diseases such as cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Other winners of the 2024 Balzan Prize are criminologist John Braithwaite of the Australian National University, science historian Lorraine Daston, director of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, and American chemist Omar Yaghi of the University of California Berkeley.

The four winners were announced today by the International Balzan Foundation in Milan. This year’s Balzan Prizes are awarded for research areas ranging from law to the history of science and from the biology of ageing to innovative materials. The prizes are worth 750,000 Swiss francs each, and the winners are expected to use half of the prize money to finance research projects involving a new generation of young researchers. The awards ceremony will take place on 21 November in Rome in the presence of the President of the Italian Republic.

Award-winning researcher

Prof. Michael N. Hall has been conducting research at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel for over thirty years. Here, in the early 1990s, he discovered the protein Target of Rapamycin, or TOR for short. By switching various signaling pathways on and off, it controls the growth and size of cells. Malregulation of the extensive TOR signaling network is associated with aging processes and the development of cancer and diabetes.

Over the years, Hall was able to add more pieces to his original discovery. He discovered that TOR exists in two protein complexes and was thus able to explain why TOR works in different ways in the cell. With his work, Hall has fundamentally changed our understanding of cell growth and aging and provided important clues for the development of new cancer drugs.

Michael N. Hall, 71, was born in Puerto Rico and spent his childhood and youth in Venezuela and Peru. After completing his doctorate at Harvard University, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institut Pasteur in Paris and at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1987, Hall joined the Biozentrum of the University of Basel as an assistant professor. He has been teaching and researching here as a professor of biochemistry since 1992. He is also a research group leader at the Institute of Human Biology in Basel, which was founded by Roche in 2023.

He has received numerous prestigious awards for his pioneering work, including the Louis Jeantet Prize for Medicine (2009), the Marcel Benoist Prize for Science or Human Medicine (2012), the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2014), the Canada Gairdner International Award (2015), the Lasker Award (2017) and the Sjöberg Prize (2020). In 2014, Mike Hall was inducted into the US National Academy of Sciences. In 2021, he was also awarded an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Michael N. Hall is the second researcher from the University of Basel to receive a Balzan Prize: the developmental biologist Prof. Walter Gehring, also from the Biozentrum, was awarded the prize in 2002.

Pictures

Prof. Dr. Michael N. Hall. (Image: University of Basel/Biozentrum, Matthew Lee)
Matthew Lee
University of Basel/Biozentrum, Matthew Lee